"It appears that a big European bank got close to failure last night. European banks, especially French banks, rely heavily on funding in the wholesale money markets. It appears that a major bank was having difficulty funding its immediate liquidity needs.

The cavalry was called in and has come to the successful rescue.

The Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, the Swiss National Bank, and the Bank of Canada in a coordinated action moved to provide liquidity to the global financial system."

So they saved it last night, and tomorrow, when everyone begins to know who is in trouble? If the bank is bust, only central banks propping it up, then it is a dead bank walking, and we will find out soon enough who it is. Then we'll see what's left standing afterwards.

Well, I guess I was kinda hoping that there would be some kind of Deus ex Machina that might pull us out of the situation, but it's looking less and less likely. Two quotes both from the gold ole' Torygraph, in this article and its counterpart from Jeremy Warner.

Warner first:

"Contingency planning is in progress throughout Europe. From the UK Treasury on Whitehall to the architectural monstrosity of the Bundesbank in Frankfurt, everyone is desperately trying to figure out precisely how bad the consequences might be. What they are preparing for is the biggest mass default in history. There's no orderly way of doing this. European finance and trade is too far integrated to allow for an easy unwinding of contracts. It's going to be anarchy."

Brogan then chips in:

"The Economist, with its cover of a euro coming down in flames, asks 'Is this really the end? and answers that, basically, yes it is. A senior minister explained to me a few days ago that contingency planning is now well underway, and takes in both preparations at home for a shock on the banks and work with consulates and embassies abroad, specifically in the eurozone, to anticipate social and banking disruption when it all goes wrong. The betting in Team Dave seems to be that the game is as good as up for the single currency. "It's in our interests that they keep playing for time because that gives us more time to prepare," the minister told me."

This is not going to be fun folks. We paid a lot for the ticket, and the show is no good.

Well, the good ole Daily Mash have done it again. I have my sumary comment for this year courtesy of Psychic Bob, their horoscope master.

"Aquarius (20 JAN-19 FEB)As 2011 draws to a close, you look back on the preceding 11 months and wonder whether 2010 told this year that you had bareback loveplay with its mother."

Actually, I'm Leo, but this sums it up for me. As to astrology, I think that the Punch cartoon from the 1980's capures the essence. There's a middle aged chap staring at the television, which is obviously running the news, as the newscaster says:

”The practice of astrology took a major step toward achieving credibility today when, as predicted, everyone born under the sign of Scorpio was run over by an egg lorry”.

We went to the Mediterranean for a holiday, at the Club Med Palmiye, which was brilliant. Club Med is not cheap, but you go there and there is huge range of activity, and goings on, which you basically get as part of the package, and all food drink, etc. is also in the agreement, so you can really just relax. We also had several friends that go there for the Geneva school holidays, so we had other people to play with. In fact, judging by the travel schedule on the notice board, most of Geneva seemed to have the same idea.

Here is a picture of the Spaceship crew. (Wim the Most Intelligent Member of the Crew went for a nice autumn break with his friend Patch, who is one of our neighbours.)

RIM have had the Blackberry service down in EMEA for the last three or four days, which is a disaster for a company that is so central to mobile comms. Given that their products are pretty lacklustre right now, the one thing that everyone always said was "well, at least e-mail works."

Best comment of the stressed yuppie classes came from former Labour spinmeister Alastair Campbell who tweeted:

"day 3 of blackberry blackout. Some free advice. Explain while you fix. Apologise when you have. Recompense after. handling so far woefuk."

Woeful was the intended word, one assumes, but the type really sums it up nicely, a woefuk of a situation.

Are RIM and Nolkia in competition for the Digital Equipment Corporation Memorial award for taking brilliant companies and products, and pissing it up against the fence?

Man, if you had to do a text book case of how to mishandle a complex and escalating situation, you could not do a more mangled and screwed up job than the vast numbers of people who all seem to have conflicting roles in the demise or whatever happens next to the Euro.

Greece will default, it's a question of how long, and how much. When it does the big banks go down. Dexia is looking wobbly already, SocGen and BNPP have also been the subject of intense speculation, and at least some German lenders would be very exposed. Short question is who gets screwed? The PIIGS by being forced into austerity and deflation, or the bank countries, notably Germany and France?

None of it bodes well for the overall popularity of the Euro experiment.